Feeling down: Why do I feel bad?

Is your life in a rut? Don’t know why you’re feeling bad and think it’s time to do something about it, but don’t know what? This then, is the article for you.

We sometimes go through bad patches in our lives when things just seem to be going wrong. One bad thing follows another, and we find ourselves feeling low, depressed and not knowing how it happened or what we can do about pulling ourselves out of this cycle.

So why *do* I feel bad?

The reasons why you might be feeling bad are many and varied. It may be due to negative experiences you’ve had, relating to your work, relating to your family or social peers… it could be 101 reasons and each of us will have unique ones. Whatever the reason, we can learn how to extricate ourselves from these negative experiences, and prevent them from happening, and we can do this through getting to the core common denominator for the vast majority of bad feelings. This common denominator is linked to The Law of Attraction.

Understanding how the Law of Attraction works can help give us many insights as to what exactly is happening.

What is the Law of Attraction?

In a nutshell, everything in our world is made up of energy and carries a vibrational frequency. Even our thoughts vibrate, radiate signals and attract back the signals that are of the same vibration. What I’m talking about here, is the famous “Law of Attraction”.

The equation is a simple one: Like attracts like.

If you set yourself to one vibration, that’s the energy you will attract back.

It’s like tuning a radio. If you set it to a music channel, you’ll get music vibrating back to you. If you set it to the news, you’ll get the news projecting back at you. It’s the same with our thoughts, feelings, behaviours and life experiences.

So, if you are setting yourself to a “channel” that’s constantly thinking about how bad life has been to you and what terrible things have happened to you, you are vibrating on these “frequencies of lack” and “frequencies of negative experiences”, and so these things will be attracted back to you. You get what you give.

Through exposure to life experiences, some people hold onto negative beliefs that keep them locked into a negative vibrational pattern. Because they are sending out these negative signals, they are attracting into their lives people and experiences that match this same negative vibration. They become stuck in a certain way of being, and they are not happy, no matter how hard they try. Negative ideas, thoughts and feelings = negative life experiences and feelings.

Because the Law of Attraction brings back to you what you send out, it’s no wonder you keep yourself in a rut, attracting one bad experience after another. If you keep thinking how wretched you are, the Law of Attraction will match this vibration and you’ll continue feeling bad.

The Law of Attraction is backed up by research studies in psychology (e.g. Berkowitz 1990) which have proven that our memories are stored in interconnected networks of associated ideas, images, and feelings. Once a negative feeling or thought occurs, it activates a host of related negative memories, feelings, and behaviours.

How can I make the Law of Attraction work in my favour?

1.) Become aware of thoughts that are making you feel bad

The process of getting awareness starts with gauging how we feel exactly, and trying to describe this feeling. Is this bad feeling disappointment? Anger? Fear? Sadness? Anxiety? Loneliness? Hopelessness? Discouragement? Insecurity? Lack of self-love? Pessimism? Our feelings are very good gauges because they can be very strong and give us powerful messages about aspects of our life.

The next step is trying to figure out the root cause behind the feeling. Behind every bad feeling, is some form of negative thought. Where do these negative thoughts come from? A lot of the time they come from what people have told you or “done to you” in the past. Remember, with freedom of choice, we all, on some level allow things into uor lives, be it consciously or not. Things are usually not “done to us” without our permission. This is why living with awareness is so important. You gain the advantage of making conscious choices in your life and therefore feel more in control of what’s happening to you.

Often, people will try to convince you about the truth of their beliefs, even if their belief is rooted in hopelessness or negativity. Are such beliefs true? What can be defined as truth? Is there such a thing?

The only reason why anything manifests into a physical, definable “truth” for one person is because they accept it as truth. Someone else’s belief need not be yours, and you don’t have to make it your reality. You can choose whether you want to accept it or not.

Sometimes things were said to us in the past and in our minds we somehow chose to accept these words despite their not serving us well, and desipite them only functioning to bring us down. Someone in the past may have called you “stupid” or “shy” or “a loser” etc, and all through your life you take on this word and believe it, limiting yourself and feeling bad at the same time. We don’t even realise that we have accepted these so-called “truths” that someone else made up. We just accept them as true and live with the consequences of feeling bad.

Things that were “done to us” in the past, whether it was some form of rejection or exclusion, can also form beliefs in our minds about ourselves.

Often these beliefs are inaccurate, untrue, limiting, and not at all beneficial.

We can, however become conscious of the process of why we feel bad.

The point of becoming aware of where your bad feeling comes from is not to apportion blame. The belief can often be tracked to a certain event which is usually related to a person or set of people, but apportioning blame and not taking responsibility are not helpful and won’t improve your feeling. If all you do is blame others for your misfortunes, you’ll still be vibrating on a level of lack and negativity, so of course you can’t feel good.

However, the act of identifying what happened to make you feel bad is of utmost importance. Because it’s the only way you can break the cycle of negativity, which is perpetuated by lack of awareness. Many people are not aware of how they are living their lives and they go through life on automatic pilot, feeling that they have no control over what happens to them. They follow habits and behaviours that don’t make them feel happy, and their lives are made unhappy by their limiting beliefs that they have unwittingly just accepted, not even realising they’ve done so. Unhelpful patterns might be repeated time and time again, and life becomes unbearable.

Becoming aware or conscious is imperative to break this chain and realise that things don’t just “happen” to us. It is we ourselves who often create many of our life experiences with our own thought processes, for better or for worse. We can become victims of circumstance because we have no awareness. As we become aware, we can look at why we feel as we do and look towards ways of rectifying the situation.

Becoming conscious of your feelings is an important step to helping yourself change feeling bad into feeling good.

2.) Choose your thoughts and beliefs carefully

If there is something you want to change in your life to feel better, you can’t keep thinking about how miserable you are, because by the Law of Attraction, this will perpetuate feeling bad.

Change your thoughts; change the experiences you attract to yourself.

We all have the freedom of choice and any belief or thought that we created can be changed.

If your thoughts are negative, choose thoughts that make you feel happy so your life starts to feel substantially better.

We want to now focus on changing our thinking patterns positively and drawing to ourselves good life experiences.

It is everyone’s right to feel good. It actually is our natural state of being. We need to align our thoughts of what we want with the appropriate vibration so that the two are in total harmony. Let’s do it now!

Exercise for Helping you attract positive thoughts to attract positivity into your life:
The Feeling Good Technique

Give yourself time to make yourself aware of your feeling, and figure out the cause. Now you are ready to start the Feeling Good Technique.

Set aside 15-20 minutes to do this. Ensure you’ll not be disturbed. Turn off your phone. Have a blank sheet of paper and a pen handy.

(i.) Close your eyes briefly and without dwelling on it, bring your attention to what happened to make you feel bad.

(ii.) Now tell yourself exactly what you DON’T want anymore.

e.g. I don’t want to feel lonely ; I don’t want to feel like a failure ; I don’t want to feel ugly, etc

(iii.) Now that you are clear on what you don’t want, tell yourself what you DO want.

e.g. I feel depressed, and I want to feel happy

I feel like a loser and I want to feel I’m successful

I feel ugly and fat and I want to feel beautiful and slim

I feel stupid and I want to feel capable

I feel no-one respects me, and I want to feel respected

I feel no-one loves me, and I want to feel loved

I feel anxious and afraid and I want to feel confident and at ease

Now take only the positive bit of these thoughts. In large letters, write down what you DO want: e.g. I WANT TO FEEL SUCCESSFUL

(iv.) Now write a statement to help back up your confidence so that you feel able to achieve this goal.

For example, if your goal was: I WANT TO BE SUCCESSFUL, a statement that can back this up would be: “Others like me can succeed, so I have hope that I too can be successful.” , or “I feel proud I’m taking my first steps to change my life. I am becoming more aware and feel more in control of my life”, or “I am already successful at [insert something you know you are successful at]”,

The statement should be positive enough to make you feel better about yourself. If you don’t feel better, discard the statement and think of another one that is more powerful and that you feel comfortable with.

When you write your powerful, affirming statement, stay with it for 17 seconds, for the positive feeling to sink in. Then move on to another positive statement.

Write a list of 10 such statements that reinforce the fact that it is within your grasp to shift your feeling towards your goal and so help connect you with that positive feeling.

The idea is to feel better with each statement and to raise your vibrations so that you feel closer and closer to what you want to achieve, until you do reach your desire.

This technique can be repeated as many times as you wish, on any negative feeling you have until you find yourself raising your vibrations and achieving a feeling of joy.

You may find it helpful to keep your list and have a look at it every time you find these specific negative thoughts creeping in to remind you of all the positive thoughts you need to be thinking instead.

For those who feel bad but wonder why they don’t *really* want to change…
Sometimes, in spite of knowing we’re attracting negativity towards us, and we feel bad, we resist wanting to change. Why? Usually this is because there is some secondary gain. Feeling down serves a purpose, whether it’s making others feel sorry for us which we enjoy, or whether it gives us attention, or even it could just make us feel *something*, and we are grateful for this. A lot of reasons could be behind a secondary gain. They are not always logical.

The only way to overcome secondary gains is to weigh up the benefits received vs the disadvantages of maintaining negativity, and hopefully you’ll find that disadvantages of negativity are stronger than their benefits, so you can let them go. As an exercise, try and pick holes in every benefit of maintaining negativity. Holes are really easy to find in arguments supporting damaging behaviour.

Secondary gains are part of the reason why not everyone can be helped by a therapist. The therapist’s role is to help you help yoruself, and if you choose to hold onto negative beahviours, it is your choice. You afterall are your own healer and the practitioner is a catalyst to your healing. You always have ultimate control.

By activating the Law of Attraction we choose what we want out of life, and hopefully we choose to make our lives as enjoyable and happy as possible.

About the Author
This article was written by Spiritual Counsellor, Janice, and was edited by Li-Or

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Disclaimer:Every effort has been made to ensure that the information contained in this article is accurate. However the information contained in this article is for educational purposes only. Suggestions contained in this article are not intended as a substitute for consultation with a health professional. All matters regarding health and supplementation require medical supervision and careful examination of contraindications. The author does not accept responsibility for the use of this information, nor shall the author be liable for any loss, injury or damage allegedly arising from any information or suggestions in this article.

8 Responses to Feeling down: Why do I feel bad?

Lior, this is a great article! As someone who has struggled with depression for most of my life (and have ‘self-helped’ myself with varying degrees of success!), I never even considered the concept of the Law of Attraction, and that being ‘tuned in’ to negative energies could play a substantial part in perpetuating low moods.

I shall certainly attempt some of the techniques explained here! Thank you

I’ll pass on your kind words to Janice. I’m sure she’ll be happy this article could offer you some new ideas on how to handle the depression you’ve been dealing with for so many years. I hope that by trying some of these methods you’ll be able to improve how you feel.